Melissa on the road

Journalist at RFI (ex-DW, BBC, CBC, F24...), writer (on art, music, culture...), I work in radio, podcasting, online, on films. As a writer, I also contributed to the New Arab, Art UK, Byline Times, the i Paper... Born in Paris, I was based in Prague, Miami, London, Nairobi (covering East Africa), Bangui, and in Bristol, UK. I also reported from Italy, Germany, Haiti, Tunisia, Liberia, Senegal, India, Mexico, Iraq, South Africa... This blog is to share my work, news and cultural discoveries.

23/02/2015

Film : "Les Jours d'avant" de Karim Moussaoui

Paris, Barbès, Louxor : magnifique découverte grâce à notre cinéma du quartier, "Les Jours d'avant" de Karim Moussaoui.

Trop difficile pour moi d'en dire plus moi-même...

Présentation :

Dans une cité du sud d’Alger, au milieu des années 1990, Djaber et Yamina sont voisins mais ne se connaissent pas. Pour l’un comme pour l’autre, il est si difficile de se rencontrer entre filles et garçons qu’ils ont presque cessé d’y croire. En quelques jours pourtant ce qui n’était jusque là qu’une violence sourde et lointaine éclate devant eux, modifiant à jamais leurs destins.

La bande annonce :

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Quelques infos sur le site de RFI :

CINÉMA ALGÉRIE PLUS AFRIQUE
Publié le 04-02-2015 Modifié le 04-02-2015 à 11:50

«Les Jours d’avant», la fracture de la société algérienne

Par Elisabeth Lequeret

«Les Jours d’avant», de Karim Moussaoui.D.R.

Karim Moussaoui revient sur l’Algérie des années de plomb, la décennie noire des années 1990, vues par deux adolescents. « Les Jours d’avant » a reçu le Grand prix du jury et le Prix de la meilleure actrice au Festival Premiers plans d’Angers. Ce premier film, juste et sensible, sort ce mercredi 4 février en salles.

Dans une cité non loin d’Alger, Djaber et Yamina, deux adolescents, se croisent, s’observent, se frôlent. Yamina est belle comme le jour et une histoire d’amour pourrait prendre forme, mais nous sommes en Algérie, au milieu des années 1990, et la violence commence à éclater autour d’eux. Il y a aussi la société, la tradition, les interdits… La vie est morne dans cette cité où les garçons errent désœuvrés. Un jour, un ami de Djaber organise une fête. Yamina fait le mur pour se rendre en cachette à cette boum, terrorisée à l’idée que son père, policier, puisse la découvrir.

Karim Moussaoui restitue la violence des années de plomb en évitant les pièges du cinéma militant. Tout passe ici par les regards, furtifs, effrayés, que se jettent Djaber et Yamina. Les Jours d’avant est un film en deux parties : l’une raconte l’histoire telle que le garçon l’a vécue, l’autre donne le point de vue de la fille. Deux points de vue irréconciliables comme si cette fracture inscrivait au cœur même du film celle de la société algérienne tout entière.

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Allez-y!

"Aimer dans sa force et non dans sa faiblesse", Simone de Beauvoir

« Le jour où il sera possible à la femme d'aimer dans sa force et non dans sa faiblesse, non pour se fuir mais pour se trouver, non pour se démettre mais pour s'affirmer, alors l'amour deviendra pour elle comme pour l'homme, source de vie et non mortel danger. »

Simone de Beauvoir

“Le deuxième sexe”

(1949)

"On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself – on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger. In the meantime, love represents in its most touching form the curse that lies heavily upon woman confined in the feminine universe, woman mutilated, insufficient unto herself."

22/02/2015

Presenting Bristol Museum

31 January—14 June 2015

Hockney: A Rake’s Progress

Hogarth’s classic morality tale gets a Pop Art makeover by renowned and influential artist David Hockney.

David Hockney’s A Rake’s Progress was inspired by the works of the same name by William Hogarth who painted them in 1735. Hogarth’s sequence of eight pictures show the downfall of a rich young man seduced by the charms of London and corrupted by its vices.

Set in New York in the early 1960s, Hockney’s A Rake’s Progress is an autobiographical journey of self-discovery.

All eight prints are from our own collection at Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives and will be displayed in advance of our major William Hogarth exhibition in May.

Booking information

31 January—14 June 2015

Free exhibition.
Second Floor.

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17 January—31 August 2015

Modern Art in Britain: Reality Questioned

See your favourite 20th century British paintings in a new light with Modern Art in Britain: Reality Questioned.

Paintings by artists such as Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, David Bomberg and Eric Ravilious reveal how they experimented with primitivism, illusion, visual puns and abstraction.

Booking information

Free exhibition.
Balcony gallery, first floor.

Find us

Queens Rd
Bristol

BS8 1RL

We're located on Queens Road just off Park Street, only a five to ten minute walk from the city centre.

There are several bicycle stands close to the museum where you could park your bike if you're cycling here.

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Link to the website: http://www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/bristol-museum-and-art-gallery/whats-on/

About tax avoidance and evasion: The UK Gold

I've been working on tax avoidance, earlier this month, in Africa - articles to come. And the subject does not seem to be able to disappear from the news any time soon.

Here is a link to the wonderful work done by Tax Justice Network in Africa:
http://www.taxjusticeafrica.net/fr

And coming soon on British television is this documentary film, named the UK Gold:

The UK Gold, a new documentary on corporate tax avoidance, airs on London Live at 8pm Wednesday 25th March. Narrated by Dominic West, and featuring an original sound score by Thom Yorke (Radiohead), Robert Del Naja (Massive Attack) and Guy Garvey (Elbow).

More here on The Independent:

Developing countries lose an estimated $160bn a year to corporate tax avoidance, far more than all of the combined aid they receive

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/maketaxfair-its-time-for-a-tax-dodging-bill-10059314.html
Another day, another scandal of corporate tax dodging hits the news. The general election debate has been thick with talk of the tax dodging practices of HSBC’s Swiss arm and sparked a bigger debate about tax avoidance over the last week.

The public outrage is clear and justified. And it has been this way for the past few years as one after another, stories about Google, Starbucks, Amazon and beyond have hit the papers. For many people it’s a sign of the broken relationship between people, large companies and government.

The issue boils down to one of basic fairness – if ordinary people are paying their fair share of tax, why aren’t large corporations? That’s why a recent poll showed an overwhelming 85 per cent of the UK public said they thought tax avoidance was morally wrong, even if it’s legal. The law on tax dodging is playing catch up with the public, as are all the political parties. Only 20 per cent of people think that politicians have done enough to tackle tax dodging.

In the wake of a slow and partial response from politicians in recent years, it’s no surprise to see campaigners setting the agenda for what real change looks like. That’s why ActionAid has joined together with a broad coalition of more than 20 other organisations who all believe that tax needs to be made fair.

We’re calling for the next government to introduce a Tax Dodging Bill within 100 days of the general election. This law would tackle corporate tax dodging by UK companies here in the UK and in some of the world’s poorest countries.

In just two weeks since the campaign launched, more than 50,000 people, over 60 academics and economists, a variety of faith leaders and businesses have backed the call. The momentum is growing and the political parties are feeling the pressure. But we do not yet have the commitment to the Tax Dodging Bill we need.

The bill we’re proposing could raise at least an extra £3.6bn in tax for the UK and curb tax dodging by UK companies that costs some poorer countries an estimated £3bn a year.

With the UK losing billions and developing countries losing a total estimated $160bn to corporate tax dodging every year, we simply can’t afford not to.

This story isn’t simply one about the scandal and intrigue of corporate tax dodging. It’s about real people, whose lives could be changed for the better through these tax revenues.

Developing countries lose an estimated $160billion a year to corporate tax avoidance, far more than all of the combined aid they receive. An excerpt from The UK Gold, set to air on London Live at 8pm Wednesday 25th March, explains the devastating impact of tax avoidance on developing countries like Zambia; an estimated 85,000 children’s lives could be saved every year if companies paid their fair share of tax.

In Zambia in southern Africa, despite the country’s rich mineral wealth in metals like copper, almost two-thirds of the population live below the poverty line. Mpumba Primary School is supposedly government funded but has so little money that teachers pay for the electricity from their salaries.

Faines Kalaba, grandmother of a pupil at the school told us: “A lot of things could change for the better if companies paid more tax to the government. We have a lot of problems which are caused by receiving insufficient funds. I would love to see a school that has enough teachers and learning materials. If these companies paid more tax, I think a lot of these problems would be attended to.”

Tackling tax dodging really could have a huge impact. The amount of tax introducing a Tax Dodging Bill could recover in poorer countries would be enough to put half the children in the world who currently don’t go to primary school into the classroom.

Corporate tax dodging is an issue whose time has come. The Tax Dodging Bill is how we will judge progress.

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Watch the UK Gold trailer here:

And an extract here:

An interview:

Occupy London's Xmas Party with 3D and Thom Yorke

In Bristol next week: Amy Mason's reading at the Spike Island Gallery

In Bristol next week, part of the Festival of Ideas:

Novel WritersAmy Mason
@ Spike Island

Discover new writers and great books in these informal sessions. Each month a debut novelist will read from and discuss their work, exploring theme, structure and the craft of writing. Extracts of the text are available on booking and debate and discussion are welcome.

Almost 30 and entirely irresponsible, Ida Irons returns home for her mother’s funeral. It’s the first time she’s been back, or seen her younger sister Alice, in many years. Their mother was the caustic and secretive writer Bridie Adair, who named Ida after her infamous play. While Ida has been struggling to escape its shadow, Alice has been dealing with problems of her own. Forced to confront their fractured relationship, the sisters question their own troubling memories and the story behind the strange, violent play that bears Ida’s name. Who really was the other Ida? Amy Mason was writer-in-residence at Spike Island in 2011, where she completed the final draft of The Other Ida, for which she has been awarded the 2014 Dundee International Book Prize.

Tickets are available to buy online here

In partnership with Bristol Festival of Ideas.

Date

Thursday 26 February 2015, 6.30pm

Admission

£5, £3 concessions Booking advised

Event type

Talks:
Novel Writers

Venue

133 Cumberland Road, Bristol BS1 6UX

http://www.spikeisland.org.uk/visit-spike-island/

Read more about Amy Mason's favourites in the city here in the Bristol 24/7 website's article:

http://www.bristol247.com/channel/news-comment/people/my_bristol_favourites/my-bristol-favourites-amy-mason

Bristol 24/7 , February 21, 2015

Amy Mason is a writer and performer. Her new solo show Mass deals with her relationship with faith and is currently in development with Bristol Old Vic Ferment, playing in the Old Vic studio from March 30 to April 2. Hear her talk about her award-winning debut novel The Other Ida at Novel Writers at Spike Island on February 26 and at the Bristol Women's Literature Festival on March 15.

Here are Amy's top-five Bristol favourites:

Crusties
"Bristol is full of different breeds of hippy: deli mums in Clifton, vegan punks in Easton and in Stokes Croft – where I lived for ages - there are still proper 90s crusties. White people with dreadlocks aren’t universally loved, but I grew to be quite fond of them. Being fashionable is just really cowardly isn’t it? I like people who dress how they want even if they look idiotic. I suppose what I’m saying is that Bristol is the best place in the world to be uncool. If you want to wear a bindi or get into steam punk, then move to Bristol. It’s extremely unlikely you’ll get beaten up."

Buses
"The day after I moved to Bristol from London I was getting a bus from Bedminster into town. At the stop everyone was talking to each other and I thought they were all both related and mad. Then the bus driver called me ‘babber’ and an old man in front of me offered a crying woman - who he didn’t seem to know - some valium from a pack in his pocket. That actually happened. Bristol is a kind and hilarious place, and buses are a great way to experience it first hand. I’ve developed a theory that the way a town queues for buses shows you the kind of town it is, and I've never met politer queuers than in Bristol."

That crepe stall outside the Watershed
"Everyone’s all about Falafel King – which is brilliant – but for committed fatsos/the truly hungover, nothing beats an enormous crepe filled with cheese. That crepe stall doesn’t get the attention it deserves. I don’t even know its name!" [Editor's note: it's called Quick Crepes]

The Star & Garter
"The Star & Garter in St Paul's kind-of defies description. It is the most Bristol of all Bristol places - like the city’s power source. It’s brilliant for lots of reasons. The fact that is so diverse, it’s so friendly, and the fact it seems like it never shuts. I can’t even mind that they charge you to use to loo during St Paul’s Carnival. If you haven’t been there, please just go. Tonight if at all possible."

Drinking outside
"In lots of cities drinking outside is a sort of illicit pleasure. Not in Bristol. When it’s sunny everyone sits drinking cans on the waterfront or in Queen Square or whatever. Everyone’s so nice and happy even crusties can chuck their poi around the park with only a few grumpy glances here and there. I’ve basically sorted a full day for you haven’t I? Bus into town, drinking cans of cider outside Arnolfini while staring at some crusties, massive crepe then Star & Garter. The best day of all time!"

Bristol, bees and butterflies

Now, who's the "Butterfly caught"?

I was saying, before heading to Bristol, I'd like to catch butterflies, because I expected so much joy and beauty from that trip. My expectations were overtaken.

I was listening to this song, as always, but in a Bristol anticipation way:

Then my name meaning "honey bee", a friend sent me a song about bees and butterflies...

And I found this graffiti in Bristol on a Saint Werburghs' wall:

Today, I feel like I've been caught...

Bristol, you're gonna see more of me.

19/02/2015

Bristol inspirations

Just because the world is falling apart, it does not mean we have to give up on everything.
Bristol, you gave me the hope I was looking for.

Bristol being the EU Green capital... Bristol and its lively Nigerian community I met ahead of  Nigerian elections, its Somali and Jamaican neighbourhoods over there in Stokes Croft... 

Me and my shadow in Saint Pauls, near Stokes Croft, Bristol

© Melissa Chemam

Bristol, and the M Shed's exhibition and talks on Black and Asian soldiers in World War I, shows is has been a from long ago hub between England, the Caribbeans and Africa and still is. Bristol, where punk met reggae and hip hop!

The highly interesting exhibition at the M Shed on Bristol and WWI is till on for weeks

Nature in the city, towards Saint-Werburghs City Farm, Bristol North

© Melissa Chemam

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The sound that comes to my mind after this list of thriving sources of inspiration is this Massive Attack song from the early days, with Horace Andy's powerfully warm voice. Though the guys might never have believed in the "One Love" thing, spiritually, it's there somewhere, isn't it?

Live version:

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Bristol, see you soon my love.

War everywhere

Nice to be back home. Overwhelmed with scary news though.
I miss Bristol, a place where people care about making their environment a better place and their community live and interact better together.

I have to write about Bristol today, about its "kid" Tricky tomorrow and his music, about Nigerians in England too, then I feel we'll have to move on to those very "current affairs" topics.

War everywhere...

Let's pay attention to the situation in Libya, in Syria of course, in Nigeria - especially in its North, and Niger, in Tunisia, and in Ukraine. South, East, North, all in turmoil.

Like a Cassandre, I'll wait and see but can't we already hear the sound of this?

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Today's anthem then:

"I know the drill, got cells to burn, I'm dressed to kill
A mortal coil and time is still on secret soil
Yeah, pay the bills, cells to burn, mouths to fill
On Boeing jets in the sunset make glowing threats"...

Massive Attack, "Atlas Air", 2010, from the album Heligoland

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Lyrics:

Yes, shall we take a spin again in business?
This time is fixed, let's sweeten our facilities
It took all the man in me
To be the dog you wanted me to be

Shall we take a spin again, no witnesses?
This time is fixed seven three seven is
You won't feel a thing
Begging until you give it up insane

Fish like little silver knives
Make the cuts on my inside
Yeah, let him feast my heart is big, my heart is big
My blood will slide in metal studs

Tourniquet will hold its groove
Tourniquet will keep its grip
It took all the man in me
To be the dog you wanted me to be

Yeah, let him feast my heart is big
My heart is big, my blood will slide
You let him feast my heart is big
My heart is big, my blood will slide

Got nothing to lose but my chains
Internet feeds on my brains
Head in the sand, feet in the clay
And time is still like grease it slips
Sucking in, spitting pips, yeah, spitting pips

Nothing to lose but my chains
Internet beats on my brains
Head in the sand, feet in the clay
A place to piece, a place to pray

A little money should get me on my feet
This gun of smoke is slaying me
And time is still like grease it slips
Sucking in, spitting pips, yeah, spitting pips

My heart was big and like my pride
Let them feast on my insides
And when the filled had spilled its guts
Gently open then it shuts

I'm in the hole three thousand days
A buried soul
They live the dream in terminal
No war too mean

I know the drill, got cells to burn, I'm dressed to kill
A mortal coil and time is still on secret soil
Yeah, pay the bills, cells to burn, mouths to fill
On Boeing jets in the sunset make glowing threats

16/02/2015

Bristol through music - in pictures

Day 6 in Bristol and I found a second home :)

Among many trends and attractions that helped bringing me in this lovable city, one is definitely its music scene.

Hereunder, a few pictures to illustrate how alive it still is.

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The panini menu at the Art House, Stokes Croft: